


Love Hopes All Things

by 221b_hound



Series: Captains of Industry [33]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternative Universe - Hipsters, Australia, M/M, Marriage Equality, Same-Sex Marriage, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 01:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12948360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: Australia finally made marriage equality into law in December 2017. The came into effect on midnight of the 8 December. As couples have to give a month's notice before a wedding, the earliest any gay couple could marry was 9 January 2018.Mycroft and Greg got married that first possible day.





	1. Mycroft and Greg

Greg and Mycroft were married in their own back yard.

Initially Greg had hoped to be showered with confetti and tears in the Botanic Gardens, but garden weddings were usually booked a year ahead and there was no way he was going to wait that long.

When Greg proposed, Mycroft cried. He cried again when he verbalised his yes after three minutes of simply nodding and clinging to Greg’s shoulders. He cried again making the suits, and choosing the ties, and watching Greg make their shoes.

He felt embarrassed about all the crying, until, after crying when he engaged the celebrant, Greg gathered him up and kissed his blotchy red face all over.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” Greg murmured, kissing Mycroft’s cheeks; his forehead; his jaw. “I don’t know how I got to be so lucky.”

“That you’re lumbered with a sentimental idiot for a life partner?” Mycroft winced, feeling snotty and grotesque and foolish.

“That I’m loved so much by the smartest, most handsome, most talented fiancé that ever lived. That my husband-to-be’s heart is so full that it overflows at every reminder that we get say ‘I do’ out loud and sign our names on a piece of paper and be _wed_ to each other so no-one can ever say we don’t belong to each other. I’m so lucky. I’m so lucky to be loved like that.”

“It’s not luck,” Mycroft told him, eyes shining, all the tears dried up in the warmth and heat of how very much he adored his husband-to-be. “You are the most. The. Most. Perfect.”

Then his voice wouldn’t work, and he cried again, but then he laughed as Greg bit his throat, and stripped him bare, and kissed every pale centimetre of that English Rose skin, sucked red blossoms onto his favourite parts. They had their wanton way with each other in the living room.

(Amelia Airhead watched, nodding, the rapid rise and fall of arses, trilled a curious mew, then was startled by the sudden shouting and slipped upstairs to sleep in their bed while it was being so thoroughly ignored.)

The wedding itself was full of quiet joy on a blazing hot summer day, the grooms in their beautifully cut, light summer suits and perfect fitting shoes they’d made for each other, exchanging the rings they already owned, that had made them husbands ahead of the paperwork they signed on a garden table underneath their wattle tree.

A lot of people came to celebrate with them, from the many walks of their life. Even Sherlock managed not to accidentally insult everyone with deductions, mostly by standing close by John all day, clutching his hand, thinking not of his brother’s present happiness but of his own, even simpler wedding day, coming soon. Not soon enough.

Later, enjoying cake and champagne with the people who loved them in their party-perfect house, Greg and Mycroft kissed and Mycroft cried again. Greg cried with him, though, and then they laughed and kissed some more.

“I’m so lucky,” Greg murmured into Mycroft’s ear.

“No,” Mycroft murmured back, “I am. I am. I am.”

They were still kissing, oblivious to their guests, when their very wise guests all tiptoed back into the garden to let them revel in their luck.

*


	2. Sally and Molly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Greg and Mycroft's wedding, Sally and Molly are a little bit drunk, and they not-propose.

Sally and Molly left the happy Mr and Mr Lestrade-Holmes’s house hand in hand. Sally had a bottle of Australian Chandon Brut in one hand; Molly had nicked a couple of glasses.

They trammed it back to the city and found a place overlooking the Yarra to pour champagne and toast the happy couple, by now probably naked and honeymooning like rabbits among the detritus of Christmas decorations in every room, if their pashing behind the Christmas tree was anything to go by.

The second glass they used to toast each other.

“I love you,” Sally declared, toying with a strand of Molly’s purple-dyed hair. “Love you, my girl.”

“Love you too,” Molly said, happy-drunk. “Gimme a kiss.”

They tilted towards each other and messy kissed. Someone walking past them in a YES rainbow T-shirt cheered them. Molly and Sally saluted the well-wisher with their champagne, discovered the glasses were empty and poured a third round.

“I don’t want to marry you baby,” said Sally, all solemn. “Marriage is a patriarchal trap built to keep women as chattel.”

“I know,” said Molly, nodding.

“I don’t want you to ever be a prisoner.”

“I don’t want _you_ to ever be a prisoner of the patriarchy,” agreed Molly.

“Will you not-marry me, forever and ever and ever?”

“I will,” said Molly with an emphatic nod. “You can be my wife-not-wife.”

“Can I?” Sally began to cry. “Oh god. I love you. I love you. You make me so happy. So happy. So happy.” She sniffed hard on her happy sobbing and started to sing. “My honey’s buzzing in my hive, my baby’s got a sting; my darling girl’s my queen; I don’t need no other king.”

Molly kiss-kiss-kissed Sally’s fingers and wrists.

“Wrote that for you, Molly, my queen Molly.”

“Love you, love you, I love you Sally sweetie.”

Sally sighed low and long and folded into Molly’s arms, and Molly rubbed her cheek against Sally’s beautiful coils of dark hair.

Sometimes you don’t need to be married. You just need to know that you can if you want to.


	3. Sherlock and John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is waiting to marry John. He's a little anxious. Mycroft helps. And then it's #happiesteverafter

 Sherlock pressed his forehead to the wood panels of the side chamber of the little used boardroom on the second floor of the Nicholas Building.

He was not hyperventilating. He was not. He was not.

He totally was.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock waved a hand faintly at his brother, then pressed both palms to the wood on either side of his head and concentrated on his breathing.

“Are you having second thoughts?” asked Mycroft gently.

“Don’t be an imbecile.”

Mycroft laughed at him, a soft huff, and it made Sherlock laugh too.

“You’ll be fine, Sherlock.”

“His parents are here. His sister.”

“You think they disapprove?”

“I don’t care if they do or not.” Sherlock drew a deep breath and turned to lean against the wood panelling instead. His hair, instead of being slicked back in his usual severe style, had been allowed to fall in gentle curls. He was less self-conscious about them, after years of John playing with his hair, communicating adoration to his follicles with as much devotion as he lavished on the rest of Sherlock’s body, and his heart, and his remarkable mind.

“I just don’t want them to ruin the day after I’ve ruined the day saying something I shouldn’t.” Sherlock bit his bottom lip, as though that alone would trap those incautious truths he always spilled when he was feeling socially anxious. Which was usually when there were more than four other people in the room, and especially when most of them were strangers.

Mycroft squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “You won’t. And they won’t.”

Sherlock’s gaze was a little desperate as he looked at his brother. “Do you promise?”

Sherlock had not asked Mycroft to promise the unpromisable to him since Sherlock was six years old. Mycroft, who had been incredibly teary of late, got teary again. What a sentimental numbskull he’d become since marrying Greg a week ago.

Ha. What a sentimental old duffer he’d been for roughly seventeen years, actually, once Greg had taught him the trick of it.

“I promise,” he said, solemnly, kindly, and most sincerely. “You’re nervous, and you’ve no need to be.”

“I know.” Sherlock took a deep breath. “I know,” he repeated, with more conviction. Chin up, shoulders back, suit crisp, love profound and affirming and making him strong again. Social anxiety could go and get fucked. Today, he married the man he loved. Today, the man he loved with every breath in him, said in front of everyone, including his own family, _I choose this one. I choose Sherlock Holmes. To be my husband. From this day forward. Forever._

They’d chosen that two and a half years ago, really. Mere days after their first kiss, their first date.

_I choose you. Forever._

When Mycroft offered him the handkerchief, Sherlock took it and dabbed his eyes. Handed it back. Got teary again.

“Keep it,” said Mycroft. “I brought several.” He patted his pocket and smiled sheepishly.

Sherlock stared, then smiled, then laughed.

“Look at us,” he said, fondly. Mycroft’s answering smile was just as foolish-fond, and it made Sherlock sober suddenly. This man, his brother, the best man at his wedding, was far removed from the dour, cold, sour, manipulative young man he’d been in Sherlock’s youth.

“What would have become of us,” Sherlock asked suddenly, “If we’d stayed in England? If we’d let our father win.”

“We’d have been very lonely men,” Mycroft said, but he grasped Sherlock’s shoulder again, and the gold of his wedding ring glinted in the light. “But that wasn’t the path we took. And here we are. The happiest of men instead, with husbands who love us. Whom we love. We have riches beyond imagining, in this city, and our vocations, and our friends. In Greg, and in John.”

A tap on the door. Greg popped his head inside, and he grinned like a besotted teenager at Mycroft.

“Hello husband!”

“Hello husband,” cooed Mycroft in reply.

“I’ve got raring-to-go husband-to-be on standby. How’s yours doing?”

“Tolerably well,” said Mycroft.

“Let’s get these two husbands hitched, then.”

“An excellent idea.”

“I’ll see you again shortly, Mr Lestrade,” said Greg.

“In a very few moments, Mr Holmes,” responded Mycroft. They both beamed.

“You’re insufferable,” said Sherlock, though he clearly meant ‘adorable’.

“You’ll be doing it yourself in about half an hour,” Greg said with a dazzling grin, and withdrew.

Sherlock took a deep breath. Mycroft offered his little brother an elbow.

They walked through the chamber door into the elegant boardroom beyond.

Sally and Molly were there. Mary and James. Martha Hudson and Dimitri, and Violet Hunter and Irene and Kate, and John’s father and mother and sister Harriet who’d come from England just for this.

Sherlock didn’t see a single one of them. He didn’t even see Greg, standing beside John in front of them all.

He only saw John. Smiling like the sun. Moustache waxed to elegant perfection, heartbreakingly handsome in his suit, in the shoes he’d stained the rich green-black himself (matching the ones he’d patinaed for Sherlock, just one floor up in his own studio). John who knew him, and whom he knew, and so they made each other real and solid and made each other fit into the world at last.

Sherlock almost blurted I Do right there and then.

John held out his hand.

Sherlock reached for it. Took it. Stood by John’s side and they smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled at each other, through the official words of the civil ceremony,  through the words that their hearts had found for each other, through the vows, through I Do, and I Do, and you may now kiss your husband.

And they kissed, and cried as they kissed, and laughed too, and kissed again, and clung together.

The happiest, the very happiest of men.

Their Instagram feeds were full of photographs for days.

#hipstersinlove #justmarried #mrhusband #groomandgroom # #happilyeverafter #happiesteverafter


End file.
